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Sunday, 28 September 2014

Existentialist thinkers
have described the 20th century as the age of anxiety and despair. The
existential crisis that leads the individual to question whether life has
meaning, purpose or value as priests and theologians insist did not emerge out
of the blue because middle class European intellectuals were bored and felt a
sense of void in their life, but in a historical context owing to developments
in society and where it washeaded. The study of existentialist
anxiety and despair appeared largely because the Enlightenment-based
rationalist order on which Western civilization was based collapsed after the
First World War. What followed the rest of the century, from the Great
Depression to WWII, Vietnam and Cold War proved very destructive in history.
Literature and poetry, art and sculpture, philosophy and psychology reflect
this existentialist theme of the 20th century that lingers into the
21st century, but at more intense levels owing to the globalization
of a culture of fear that the political, religious, social, cultural, and
economic elites cultivate.

Some scholars have
characterized the first two decades of our century as the age of paranoia
rooted in fear of just about everything from street crime to fear of immigrants
that neo-Nazis and right wing xenophobes target throughout the Western World
because they need a scapegoat for complex problems confronting society. Not
just in the 21st century, but throughout history in different societies under
various regimes through secular and religious institutions the culture of fear
was a tool that the secular and religious elites and government used to
maintain social conformity and loyalty of the masses.

In our contemporary times,
partly because of the 9/11 tragedy, partly because shock-oriented media and
entertainment have conditioned the public, the result is inordinate fear on a
mass scale. This has become a cultural phenomenon and part of the value system
that has spread beyond the US and influenced other parts of the world, some
reacting in sympathy others against, all with the culture of fear at the core. The
culture of fear is especially strong in the US after Truman launched the Cold
War in 1947 (Truman Doctrine). After the fall of the Communist bloc, the US
replaced the Cold War with “war on terror”, constantly reinforcing it with new militarist
adventures without ever addressing the roots causes of Islamic militancy.

Besides the US, the UK, continental
Europe, Australia, and other developed and developing countries that follow in
the path of “anti-terror politics” fall into a similar pattern as American
society and with surprisingly similar results. President Jimmy Carter’s
National Security Advisor Brzezinski candidly acknowledged that the US “war on
terror” was deliberately chosen to reinforce a culture of fear because "it
obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic
politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to
pursue". This is an interesting observation from the man
responsible for influencing US foreign policy toward a more hawkish orientation
after the Iran and Nicaraguan revolutions of 1979. Nevertheless to say, because
such analysis does not come from the Kremlin but from a former NSA official, it
carries a great deal of weight.

The US-led global
anti-terror campaign created “Islamophobia” at the core of the culture of fear
now globalized with all its consequences of instability in the Middle East and
Africa. In 2014, we have proliferation among militant Islamists who see unconventional
war until death the way to fight the evil conventional forces of Western governments
and their Middle East allies. If the war on terror had actually reduced instead
of increased both the number of jihadists while lessening the culture of fear,
then one could argue that it was worth the sacrifice of human rights and civil
rights, of democracy and social justice. However, the war on terror has actually
strengthened jihadists, while heightening Islamophobia and the culture of fear,
leading to the conclusion that this was the goal after all.

At the same time, the
ratings-hungry corporate-owned media in the US and throughout the world
reinforces the culture of fear and places fear-mongering front and center in
headlines. The eight years of the Bush administration are at the root of the new
culture of fear that has intensified according to public opinion polls rather
than diminished. When Obama became president there was the promise and hope of a
new orientation away from fear mongering for political purposes. Progressive
American voters and people throughout the world cheered that the Bush decade of
fear was over and at last a president committed to put an end to military
solutions to political problems.

However, it became clear
that Obama pursued a multilateral foreign policy at a very superficial public
relations level. The institutional structure – Homeland Security, “war on
terror” unilateral foreign policy, and police-state methods that override all
civil rights and human rights – remain in place in a country that calls itself
a ‘democracy’ and committed to spreading its values, rather than its
imperialism throughout the world. While one expect a culture
of fear in North Korea and a sociopolitical climate of tolerance and openness in
the US and the US, fear is becoming stronger in the Western countries that
pride themselves for promoting freedom and democracy. Americans and Europeans
are more afraid today than they were right after 9/11. According to one poll,
only 20-40% of Americans were immersed in fear one year after 9/11, while in
2014 the fear factor ranges from 47% -65%. It is ironic that the wealthiest
country in the world is terrified by a culture of fear that the media, both
conservative and liberal, reinforces. This is largely because the elites have
succeeded conditioning the majority of population and the end result is an
inward-looking population afraid to question the existing social order and
political regime.

Rooted in fear of Communism
during the Cold War and more recently in Islamophobia, US foreign policy
reverberates across society and the world by inadvertently promoting intolerance
toward those of different race and ethnicity and political, ideological, religious
and cultural orientations. While the mass psychology of fear may appear
counterproductive to those advocating pluralism, democracy, equality, social
justice and creativity as core values in society, as far as the political,
social and economic elites are concerned the culture of fear helps to engender
conformity at all levels and helps to maintain loyalty to the existing social
order and political economy that strengthens the hierarchical structure.

There have always been
epochs characterized by inordinate societal fear imbedded in the dominant
culture that the political, military, socioeconomic and religious elites used
to exert greater control. This was certainly during the Holy Inquisition that
began in the 12th century and it went through the era of the Black Death (14th
and 15th century). The Inquisition and Black Death accounted for
dictatorial rule, reinforcing the culture of fear which both the upper clergy and
the nobility exploited to amass a great deal of property and wealth.

For one thousand years in
the Middle Ages the Lords and Bishops used the fear of God to keep the serfs
and peasants in conformity with a tyrannical system. Clearly, religion offered
a reward of securing a place in Paradise for those devoted solely to a
spiritual life and did not defy Church or state. When religious dogma did not
work, there was the secular mechanism – local courts influenced by the church –
and the Holy Inquisitions after the Crusades, and later the madness of witch
hunts, all driving the fear of spiritual and earthly authority into the hearts
and minds of the faithful.

The French Revolution,
which itself produced fear of radical elements under the “Reign of Terror” (Sept./1793-July/1794),
was the major political movement to question the foundations of a civilization
where the culture of fear in church and state was a catalyst. There was
certainly enormous fear on the part of Europeans after the Great War because
the foundations of their civilization along with their economies were collapsing.
As if the fear of the decline of the West as Oswald Spengler called it was not
enough, the Great Depression dealt an economic, social and political blow.

After the Second World War
that devastated Europe completely and represented the ultimate form of fear and
anxiety, it was followed by the political-ideological Cold War rooted in the
US-Soviet confrontation and competition for global influence. In the West, the
saying was “better dead than Red”, while in the East, people feared and dreaded
the imperialist, militaristic and decadent West. In short, the first half of
the 20th century was nothing but reinforcement of a culture of fear
that political regimes and socioeconomic elites had created, as much in the
West as in the East.

The eminent scholar
Geoffrey Barraclough speculated that the revolt by the East against the West would
define the second half of the 20th century. This was a logical
observation, considering that the West had imposed imperialism on the East since
the Commercial Revolution, and considering that the Bolshevik and Maoist
revolutions were shaking the foundations of the Western imperialist order that
found itself in internal contradictions as the two global wars revealed.

Samuel Huntington (The
Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order) had an updated version
of Barraclough’s theme with a Muslim centered focus in the 1990s. In the last
years of his career, Huntington became increasingly aware that the West was
fundamentally caught in the contradictions imperialism. As far as the people of
Asia, Africa and Latin America were concerned, the West was not a force of
world stability but instability and disorder. Like many before and after him,
Huntington recognized the inherent contradiction of democracy and imperialism
and this is one reason that some of his positions were immersed in ambiguity.

It is unambiguous, however,
to maintain democratic institutions at home on the basis of the doctrine of
American Exceptionalism, namely, supporting authoritarianism around the world
because it maintains the imperial status quo. Not only does American
“democracy” have no resemblance with the progressive social democracy of
Norway, but the quasi-police state society of today does not resemble
Jefferson’s democracy or FDR’s for that matter. While we do know how the US
will evolve politically by the middle or end of the 21st century
when China will be the preeminent economic power, we can speculate from the
current trends that the orientation is toward more consumerist pluralism accompanied
by greater direction toward police state methods intended to engender social
conformity.

The US-led “war on terror”
which replaced the Cold War has inflamed the passions of the East against the
West, even among those who have nothing to do with radical Islam but who see US
“war on terror” as a pretext to continue the same hegemonic policies of the
Cold War. Using the ideological veils of anti-Communist and anti-Jihadist
campaigns on a global basis entails that there are domestic consequences which
include conformity not just to a foreign policy regime, but institutional
conformity across the board. Many are amazed that the
middle class and many workers in the West not just tolerate, but support
enthusiastically a world order rooted in veiled imperialism with domestic
reverberations.

Although the Cold War and the anti-terror campaign backfire economically
because of the diversion of funds from the civilian economy to the defense/intelligence
sectors, the culture of fear keeps the masses docile if not loyal to the
institutional system. People forget how the Red Scare, the blacklisting of
creative people ruined not just the lives and families of those involved but
deprived society of the potential creative contributions of such people. All of
this was carried out so that the culture of fear may prevail by demonizing the
political enemy and sanctifying the enemy’s enemy. This was a new crusade and a
struggle between good and evil, Armageddon of biblical proportions rather than a
confrontation between different political, ideological, and socioeconomic
systems.

Naturally, there was a cost
associated with the Cold War as there is with the war on terror. Combined with
a shift from social welfare and labor protection to a regime of corporate
welfare, the cost of the war on terror has been the erosion of privileges the
middle class once enjoyed not just loss of upward mobility for their children,
but erosion in every respect including democracy. How do the middle and working
classes of the West keep to loyal to a global order rooted in imperialism and a
domestic political economy oblivious to the needs of all people and to social
justice?

Governed largely by
irrational tendencies yield to fear, human beings yield to fear. This is
exactly what the state and other institutions, especially religious, have used
for centuries and they continue to do so, focusing mostly on determinism, if
not fatalism on the part of the majority that benefit marginally or not all
from the institutional structure. In all religions, Judaism, Christianity,
Islam included, there is a sense of fatalism at the core because man cannot
possibly comprehend God’s grand plan of which man is but a small part. It is
this unscientific mode of thinking that the state and institutions use to keep
the masses in conformity.

How do people conform to
the institutional structure, even under conditions when the status quo is
overwhelmingly working against their best interests, and in some cases
detrimental? It is very difficult to have people accept their own exploitation
and it takes a great deal of work and skill on the part of the political,
religious, and socioeconomic elites. It is not easy convincing people that it
is for their own good to have low wages and fewer benefits, unaffordable health
care, unaffordable college for their children, unaffordable elderly care, and
constant raising of the age of retirement and work hours. It is not easy to
convince people that poverty is a blessing of the Lord for the masses, but a
status symbol for the top ten percent of the stockholder-citizens for whose
benefit the state exists. It is not easy convincing people that it is “fair and
just” to transfer income from the lower and middle classes through the fiscal
system for the benefit of the top income earners.

It is amazingly difficult
to convince people that it is good for them to have
institutionally-inducedinequality
created to make a small percentage privileged and the majority lesser citizens.
Why do people accept that if a regime rooted in social justice comes to power
it would be monstrous, while the existing elitist one has God’s blessing? To
achieve the goal of brainwashing the public, the state and the institutional
structure, from media to educational institutions, must perpetually keep the
population conditioned that there is no alternative to the status quo, that the
enemy is out there waiting to destroy like Satan lurking to snatch your soul,
that societal institutions must remain static because only then can there be
safety and security.

People instinctively
realize that life itself is not static but dynamic, that change is natural as
the laws of physics dictate. The contradiction arises because of the
realization that change is part of the laws of physics, while the political and
socioeconomic elites do not permit change in society.While some argue that it is possible to apply
scientific laws in society as they exist in nature, the majority immersed in
the culture of fear are looking for scapegoats, for enemies to hate and destroy.
There is a sense of emotional satisfaction that a segment of the population
derives by knowing there are enemies out there to combat and destroy; as sociopathic
and even psychotic as it may sound that people, especially elites are in perpetual
search of enemies to eliminate.

During the Age of Reason or
Enlightenment there was optimism that a better society was possible for the
benefit of all people and not just a small minority. Because human beings are
basically rational, according to John Locke and those who promoted rationalism
in the 18th century, they conform realizing the rewards of living in
an organized society where the state is like management of a company and
citizens the stockholders. This sounds great, except that in society as in a
corporation, not everyone is a stockholder to derive the benefits of a
constitutional, legal and political system set up for them. Influenced by 17th
century Dutch capitalism, Locke had in mind owners of property when he argued
that the “people” must make the laws.

If the state is the
representative of stockholder-citizens, this necessarily means that the
non-stockholders are the subjects of exploitation by those for whose benefit
the state has been established. Regardless of what rhetoric promises, the
non-stockholder citizens experience on a daily basis the absence of social
justice. The exploited non-stockholder citizenry have always done everything to
survive within the existing unjust system. A segment of the population breaks
the laws established to protect life and property of the stockholders. Another
segment dreams of rebelling to bring a new system that would include those
outside the mainstream. The state makes certain that those defying the system are
punished. The state does not rely only on punishment but also on mass
psychology of fear that becomes an integral part of the culture and thus
accepted as “natural” and people have been conditioned into docile mode to defy
it.

From the end of WWII until
the present, the state has used everything from traditional institutions like
religion, schools, police, and courts to engender conformity to the existing
system serving primarily but not exclusively the interests of the socioeconomic
and political elites that are a mere minority in society. However, because the
use of force is expensive and not always very effective inculcating mass
conformity into the public, modern propaganda through the use of the media, and
recently social media, as well as civil society organizations have become the
new tools of imposing conformity.

Is the culture of fear and
persistence of the status quo consistent with a dynamic pluralistic society, one
that claims to be democratic? Can such a society flourish and best serve its
citizens, make a contribution to the world, or does it hinder the progress of
the majority so it can continue catering to the small percentage of the wealthy
and at a great cost to the larger world community? If this is the case, then
what does it reveal about human nature that there such wide acceptance of such
a system? It is true that legitimacy and social acceptance comes from authority
and people accept the culture of fear as part of the institutional system as
though it were their own rooted in their beliefs, although it is manufactured
by and for the elites.

According to Erich Fromm,
conformity is the result of people unconsciously embracing societal beliefs and
modes of thinking as their own, thus deluding themselves that they are thinking
for themselves when in fact they avoid doing so largely because of the anxiety-provoking
elements in free thought. One could also argue that people are in fact
intellectually lazy and yield to authority because they believe it is more
comfortable and safe to conform than to question. Moreover, the individual’s
identity with a larger entity, such as church, nation, political party, place
of employment, favorite ball club, etc. affords a sense of timelessness and
community lacking in the age of mass politics and alienation.

Because the individual
internalizes the culture of fear as her/his own, the institutional structure
can claim that if the individual has a problem with fear it is a psychological
problem to be treated with therapy and medication. In the age of atomism, in the
age of “selfies” that corporations have commercialized to sell everything from
cell phones to insurance policies, the individual is conditioned to accept the
societal culture of fear as her/his personal culture. This actually serves the
purpose of distancing the individual from any sense of collectivist mindset, or
even communitarian outside the framework of specific loyalty to nation-state
and religious affiliation. Atomism is constantly what the mainstream
institutions, secular and religious cultivate thus suppressing any collectivist
tendencies of the individual with a sense of responsibility to all of humanity.

Fear mongering and
reinforcement of the culture of fear retards and distorts community solidarity
and class consciousness so that the elites remain safe and secure in their privileged
positions. Considering that those who are part of the privileged political,
economic and social elites are eager to retain their privileges in society,
they use any political, legal, and other means at their disposal including mass
propaganda that the existing order is “natural” and must be maintained without
any changes for it would disturb the balance in society. This implied
psychological warfare unleashed on the masses works for the vast majority who
are motivated by fear and want to preserve whatever little role they have in
their private universe. Preserving the status quo then becomes a top-down process
where the masses that have everything to lose and nothing to gain by advocating
conservatism find themselves defending the establishment benefiting the elites.
In the absence of opportunistic and careerist journalist, intellectuals,
lawyers, consultants, clergy, and a host of others that personally make a
career advocating anything and everything surrounding the preservation of the
status quo, it would not be possible to accomplish the goal of mass
indoctrination.

We have known or a number
of years that fear is also a determining factor in political and ideological
orientation. Based on brain detection research, conservatives are much more
prone to fear and lower cognitive ability than liberals and progressives. The
propensity toward a defensive, status quo mode of thought is actually in part
biologically based, as we have evidence that the lower IQ of conservatives
follows a pattern of fear-based behavior, while the higher IQ of progressives
is more accepting of risk and change and absence of fear arising from new
circumstances in the environment.

American and European
scientists have confirmed that the brain of conservatives loathes cognitive
complexity. It is not surprising that conservatives and extreme right wingers
prefer simplistic stereotypical explanations of complex issues ranging from
foreign affairs and immigration policy to fiscal and social policy. One reason
for this is the emotional satisfaction they derive vilifying the other, “having an enemy to hate” rather than
trying to deal with ambiguities that present themselves in various issues.

Commercializing fear for
political reasons works to the advantage of a political system that projects
the image of equal representation for all people when in essence it represents
the political economy of corporate welfare capitalism that benefits the owners
of capital with derivative benefits for the professional and managerial class.
The odd thing is that government, media, businesses, schools, and social
institutions present the status quo as “natural” as the law of gravity. We
ought not to be surprised by this because the Confucian Chinese intelligentsia
for two thousand years believed the status quo was natural. In the 19th
century, the British believed the Empire was natural. In the 20th
century, the South African whites believed apartheid was natural.

Psychologists maintain that
there is a link between fear and aggression, though the former does not
necessarily lead to the latter and the degree of both fear and aggression make
a difference as much in the individual as within the cultural milieu. At the same
time, researchers confirm that those with inordinate fear or living in a
culture of fear have a propensity toward intolerance and dogmatism as well as
aversion to risk and uncertainty. Therefore, conservatism best serves their
psychological needs, no matter how they may justify their positions
ideologically and/or politically.

Because most people have
been conditioned into the dichotomy of good and evil, forces eternally opposed
to each other, the culture of fear plays into this ethical framework already
established in the minds of the masses. Fear of terrorism, economic recessions,
crime, nuclear accidents, regional wars, epidemics, xenophobia, lawsuits, loss
of job and/or income, loss of home, physical and mental capacity, and status in
community are some of the phobias that overwhelm people, many of them on
medication for such phobias. What does all of this reveal about the
overmedicated culture of fear in Western civilization and whose interest does
this serve?

People are so ‘over-lawyered
up’ and over-insured because of fear of just about everything. The culture of
fear helps to keep the insurance companies and lawyers happy but it keeps
society on edge. In a culture of fear that the political regime, businesses,
entertainment (movies and video games), and media promote it is difficult to
escape fear as a societal phenomenon and even more difficult to be free of fear
of everyone in authority to the innocuous neighbor. Because fear becomes part
of everyday life, the individual is no longer free to think for herself/himself
but prefers robotic submissiveness to keep any possible harm away.

Robotic submissiveness is
exactly what the guardians of the status quo want rather than free thinking
individuals with a will of their own. Once we have a lock on robotic submissiveness
in mass politics we no longer have democracy but a form of authoritarianism
trying very hard to present itself as democracy. Just as tragic, the culture of
fear intended to keep the masses docile results in stifling of creativity,
allowing creative expression only within the existing commercial framework and
nothing outside it or against it, no different than a totalitarian society of
the 1930s. Therefore, the victims of the culture of fear are not just the individuals
whose creative potential is stifled, but the open democratic society as
representative of all people and not just the political and socioeconomic
elites.

Right wing populism that is
highly organized and commercialized in the US and a number of European and
other countries has contributed to the culture of fear. One of the many studies
on this topic, The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing
on the Populist Rightby Arthur Goldwag analyzes fear
mongering by the populist right wing in the US. The situation is not very
different in Europe where neo-Fascist and neo-Nazi parties have been gaining
strength, largely because democratic institutions promise to serve the middle
class and workers but in reality serve the socioeconomic elites.

However, there is not much
distance between the extreme right wing one the hand, and the conservatives and
neoliberals are on the other. To promote their brand of political economy that
caters to a small percentage of the rich, the conservatives and neoliberals use
the culture of fear as ruthlessly as neo-Nazis, warning the masses that there
is no alternative to a political economy that widens the gap between rich and
poor, leaves behind minorities and ignores social justice. The convergence of
elitist views between the traditional conservatives and neoliberals on one
side, and the far right wing fear mongering has strengthened the culture of
fear to keep the elites safely in power.

As Jean-Paul Sartre noted,
it is highly likely that elites will always be a part of society. This means
that there will never be a utopian society where equality and social justice
prevail. However, this does not mean that human beings must necessarily yield
to fatalism and stop struggling for social justice. Taking office amid the
Great Depression, FDR in his first inaugural address said to the American
people that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Coming from a
wealthy family, FDR knew very well that market distortions and excesses created
the economic depression. It would take a series of bold political decisions to
undo the disaster of the political economy.

He could have argued that
the depression was natural and people must wait until the economy recovers
based on the forces of the same market that created the deep contraction.
Setting aside fatalism and the powerful business and political forces of
conservatism that warned of FDR leading the country toward Communism, he
pressed ahead to save the system that fear mongers had crippled. FDR fought
against the culture of fear that Republicans and large businesses had been
cultivating in order to save capitalism not to destroy it as critics charged.

The persistence of the Age
of Anxiety that started in the interwar era and has evolved in a culture of
fear and paranoia best serves the ideology of the status quo that develops
inherent contradictions leading to its decline and ultimate destruction. In the
absence of the culture of fear, there could not have been a strong military-industrial
complex in the US or a military-based economy in the USSR. Although exorbitant
defense spending led to the fall of the Soviet Union, and it has contributed to
the burgeoning US public debt, there is a large percentage rooted in the
culture of fear that supports the continued militarization, even if it means
ultimate economic ruin. That same percentage of people backing militarization, support
rigid law enforcement targeting minorities and the poor, they are adamantly
opposition to immigration from non-white areas of the world, and support gun
ownership despite the violence generated.

Nazi Germany, Fascist
Italy, Stalinist Russia, and varieties of military dictatorships and
authoritarian regimes in the last once hundred years have ruled with the
culture of fear at the core of their societies. With the advent of the Cold War
in the late 1940s, the culture of fear became internationalized. Similarly, in
the early 21st century, the US has globalized the culture of fear
based on Islamophobia. Not only does this retard progress and the human
potential for creative endeavors and freedom to live in harmony and social
justice at home, but the entire world is infected by the virus of this culture
whose goal is exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.

The cost for such
conditions is and will be social instability, contributing to existing fears
and paranoia on the part of majority indoctrinated into this culture that
personalize an external situation. All of this is justified because progress is
defined by the invention of new devices such as cell phones, I-pads, laptops,
videogames, and techno devices that have substituted direct contact with human
beings and human compassion that goes with it. As long as there is progress in
technology, science and industry, the political economic and social elites
justify maintaining the status quo because they define progress on the basis of
such progress rather than on the basis of social justice. Atomistic tendencies
go hand in hand with the age of materialism in which the individual consumer is
valued far above the citizen, the billionaire valued far above the humanitarian
doctor working with the poor in sub-Sahara Africa, the famous movie star far
above the soup kitchen volunteer. These values are constantly reinforced in
everything from mass media to schools, popular books, and motions pictures that
make up the dominant culture.

Is there a solution to the
culture of fear that has been imposed top down and it is perpetually forced on
the masses from politicians, generals, defense lobbyists, journalists, consultants,
and corporations? The first step is to research and understand what forces
produce the culture of fear and for what reasons. The second step is to accept
that solutions cannot possibly be imposed by the elites to the masses, but can
come from the grassroots level. This means that people must reject the
internalization of this culture that is externally imposed to maintain a docile
population conforming to an institutional structure catering to the elites
while the rest of humanity pays the price.

Self-awareness is important
but so is collective action from the neighborhood up because society changes
from the bottom up.The use of the web and
various social networks make it possible to communicate with people across the
street and across the world to pass on the message about fighting against the
culture of fear that accounts for the absence of social justice. Nothing is
going to change overnight, probably not in a century or more because the
culture of fear has been with the human race for many centuries. However, if
people begin to take steps for themselves this would be a form of defiance to
the culture of fear that works to the detriment of the individual and society.
As much as I agree with those who feel there will probably always be elites,
fatalism, resignation, postponing action for rewards in afterlife, etc. are reasons
for the success of the culture of fear.

Friday, 19 September 2014

What is the role of NGOs in society?In the last three decades,
a number of books and articles have been published about Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs). Some focus on the marginal impact the NGOs have because
they work within an existing institutional framework responsible for the
absence of social justice. While some works praise the kind of unique services
of NGOs to people in need, others are critical, stressing that NGOs’ goal is
integration into an international political economy and institutional structure
rooted in inequality and injustice. While it is beyond doubt that there are
NGOs serving worthy humanitarian causes and acting as instruments of
alleviating misery among the poor, refugees, and others in need, there are many
more such organizations acting as instruments of globalization, and in some
cases aggressive neo-imperialism.

Are all NGOs truly
non-governmental and politically neutral, voluntary non-profit and humanitarian
interested only in the poor, the refugees, the minorities, those unprotected by
the institutional mainstream? Do NGOs serve society’s various needs at the
grassroots level with the ultimate goals of promoting humanitarian needs, human
rights, environmental protection, and social justice as they claim? Is the
definition of NGO a grassroots non-profit local, national or international
organization performing voluntary services for humanitarian purposes, or has it
expanded to include what are in essence stealthy lobbying, media and
communications, intelligence gathering, and business promotion groups?

Are all NGOs truly
independent and practice transparency as they want the public to believe, or do
they serve very sinister policy goals of big business and governments to the
detriment of different countries and different segments in any given society,
while preaching humanitarianism? How trusting should the public be when so many
NGOs around the world have been caught in fraud and corruption, used as fronts
for money laundering and other illegal activities, ranging from narcotics to
arms facilitations or transfers?

Do NGO’s emerge at the grassroots
level to serve emergency needs, and do they all have a progressive orientation
as they want people to believe? Why did NGOs expand so rapidly after the fall
of Communist regimes in the early 1990s, and how do they reflect the era of
globalization under neoliberal policies of the past three decades? What role do
NGOs play in molding public opinion and why do mainstream media present them as
non-partisan when most collaborate with government and business to shape public
opinion into accepting globalization, Western-style institutions and thorough
integration into the Western spheres of influence?

In this very brief essay,
my focus is on the top-down structure of many NGOs that have been established
to serve the interests of specific political and business interests, thus
playing a counterrevolutionary instead of a progressive role in society.
Through the manipulation of mass public opinion in the age of social media and
high tech communications, many NGOs are nothing more than agents of promoting
globalization.

NGOs- Humanitarians or covert
agents of government and big business?

Generally speaking, the
average person reading or hearing about NGOs assumes that these are all about
helping starving children in sub-Sahara Africa, providing clean water for the
impoverished masses in rural areas of developing nations, setting up medical
facilities to help the very poor in Central America and Caribbean, helping
refugees out of Iraq and Syria, etc. It is true that there are many such
organizations, including OXFAM, Danish Refugee Council, “Doctors without
Borders”, and others across the world that are devoted to helping those in dire
need, that are truly humanitarian and deserve the name non-governmental.

These NGOs deserve support
of all people because they are delivering small miracles every day, miracles
that governments and United Nations agencies cannot or would not deliver. These
prototypes were the honest NGOs before the proliferation after the collapse of
Communism that along with it created the massive wave of corrupt and sinister
organizations hiding behind the NGO name.

Large segments of the
public in many countries have little faith in government because it serves
narrow socioeconomic interests. There is equal skepticism toward big businesses
and the media that caters to the political and socioeconomic elites. This is
the case as much in smaller countries as it is in the US where the poor and
minorities do not feel that government represents them, while media is nothing
more than a propaganda machine.

To fill the credibility gap
that exists among the masses and to mold mass public opinion, NGOs have become
a great way for government and business to promote their agendas. There are
NGOs that governments and businesses set up, or fund in order to promote a
political, military or economic agenda at home or abroad. With the advent of
what the US in the early 1990s called the “New World Order”, namely a single
integrated world market under the preeminent economic, political and military
leadership of the US, there was an NGO explosion to help achieve those goals.
The goals included spreading Western-style political institutions and ideology,
preventing socialist or nationalist policies from taking hold to obstruct
American-led globalization and neoliberalism, removing all obstacles to
globalization by making use of the media and social organizations, including social
networks in social media in recent years.

Because NGOs are rarely
questioned and people assume they are non-partisan, and above nations and
politics, what better way to pursue a covert agenda than through an NGO that is
above suspicion? What better way than through an NGO, which people believe is
progressive and humanitarian, to pursue a reactionary agenda intended to serve
political and socioeconomic elites? This category of NGOs has a history of
corruption, questionable activity with regard to moving money around illegally,
transferring it if not laundering it outright from various sources, becoming
involved in staged uprisings and rebel movements, utilizing social media and
communications as part of elaborate covert operations to undermine or overthrow
governments, and other such activities one would never imagine as the business
of an NGO.

There are NGOs operating as
fronts for US Agency for International Development (USAID) and major US
foundations linked to billionaires whose goal is to secure market share around
the world. Many of these NGOs were causing havoc in Russia until Putin tried to
curtail their operations. However, Russia is hardly the exception, considering
that NGOs with similar funding and goals operate throughout the world from India
to Brazil, from the Philippines to Ukraine.

Using NGOs as fronts, the
US and its allies have used anti-nuclear and environmental NGOs to stop nuclear
plants. This is partly because the contracts for products and services are not
awarded to Western corporations, but also because of geopolitical
considerations. In July 2014, the Indian government announced that NGOs were
fronts for foreign interests undermining the national economic interests and
the country’s security. It is well known that India has a record of many human rights
violations that the media has publicized. It is not as well known, however,
that NGOs operating in India are using human rights, environmental issues and
other very significant humanitarian matters to conceal their covert role in
subverting the national economy as the finance minister announced in July 2014.

One may argue that
permitting NGOs to operate freely is a testament to a nation’s democracy.
However, there is the question of drawing the line between pressure groups
acting as lobbyists, and non-profits acting as humanitarian NGOs. Would the US
permit an al-Qaeda-funded NGO parading as a human rights group defending the
rights of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo?Would the UK permit an Indian NGO undermining its energy sector unless
UK bought more equipment from India? Would the UK permit an Iranian NGO
promoting a national nuclear energy policy?

In October 2012, NBC news
published a story about a New York-based NGO claiming to oppose Iran’s nuclear
development program. Calling itself “United Against Nuclear Iran” (UANI), it is
staffed by former US diplomats and intelligence officers, as well as former
Israeli intelligence agents. UANI presents itself to the public as a
peace-loving and a non-governmental organization opposed to Iran developing
nuclear weapons. However, UANI has no problem with the nuclear weapons of
Israel. A US-Israeli propaganda and psychological warfare machine, UANI’s goal
is to stop Western companies from doing business with Tehran, applying some of
the same tactics as human rights organizations did when they opposed
multinationals doing business with the apartheid state of South Africa before
Mandela.

Presenting their groups as
citizen advocacy with an altruistic agenda above governments and politics, NGOs
are a very clever way to push through political, economic, strategic and other
agendas that on the surface appear to be for “the good of society”. Enjoying
the cover of legitimacy as guardians of people’s rights, it is very difficult
to put an NGO on the defensive in the absence of hard evidence about its real
agenda.Despite the aura of
legitimacy, there are NGOs that are conduits not just for governments seeking
to undermine another regime, but for money laundering from government budgets going
to the pockets of politicians as well as non-government individuals and
organizations. Officials in India, Philippines, Greece and other countries have
NGO’s used for money laundering and other fraudulent operations. Receiving NGO
laundered funds as part of elaborate schemes in clientist politics is not nearly
as unusual as it sounds. Even bankrupt Greek government was using NGOs of
various types to reward financially certain politicians and favorite clients of
the ruling parties.

Some of the NGOs publicly
stated purpose was so ludicrous that it would be humorous if it were not criminal.
According to a Greek government report on NGOs, nine out of ten of the 3000
organizations were engaged in fraud and corruption involving millions
transferred from government funds into NGO budgets and back into the pockets of
certain individuals linked to the ruling parties. The Greek foreign ministry
funneled millions through NGOs for projects that never took place, including
some that never took place. Some money apparently went to bribes for removal of
land mines supposedly carried out in Iraq, Lebanon and Serbia, while other funds
went for the purpose of reforestation not of Greece that can use it but of
areas already fully forested!

The level of corruption
that existed in Greece during the 1990s and 2000s also took place in other
countries, including the Philippines. Receiving public funds, NGOs would then
turn around and use them not for the publicly stated purpose but to line the pockets
of politicians. Millions in public funds designated for agricultural
development simply wound up in the hands of a handful of people connected with
corrupt NGOs.The situation in the
Philippines appears similar to that of Greece, and both are similar to that of
Brazil where the government began a crack down to distinguish between NGOs
involved in corruption and public distortion and those doing an honest day’s
work as they publicly stated.

The subversive use and
manipulation of NGOs by governments and corporations is a distortion of
publicly-proclaimed goals. For example, Israeli arms manufacturers sell land
mines used in various conflicts. At the same time, the same manufacturers work
with NGO's to have the land mines removed. This is example illustrates the
nefarious use of NGOs, but it also reveals the unseen and unpublicized role of
these organizations that are more complicated than they appear on the surface.

NGOs, the former Soviet Republics, China and India

We have seen just a few
examples of NGOs in several countries where their role in society has nothing
to do with the promotion of public welfare, the poor or the environment, but in
essence all to do with money laundering, fraud, political, economic and
geopolitical goals. This raises the question about NGOs as a
counter-revolutionary force in society, rather than progressive as they claim.
Is their goal to advance social justice and national sovereignty or to minimize
social justice and national sovereignty, thus advancing the interests of large
international and domestic wealthy interests and foreign governments'
geopolitical agenda? Nowhere are these questions more significant to address
than in the Ukraine and all the former Soviet republics.

NGOs with questionable
goals and modes of operation are in many countries from the US to developing
nations. Russia after the collapse of the USSR has at least 400,000 NGOs, and
probably as many as one million – registered and non-registered - carrying out
political commercial and other activity behind the cover of a non-governmental
organization. Russian officials believe that roughly one-fourth of these NGOs
are foreign funded, using the cover of human rights, environmental protection,
and consumer advocacy to pursue their agendas unrelated to what they declare. Utilizing
the connections with government agencies and mainstream media outlets, directly
or indirectly-funded government NGOs essentially exert what some analysts call “soft
power” – “co-opting through their organizations.

When the Communist bloc
fell, the US and western European NGOs played a key role in infiltrating the
newly-independent republics with the goal of helping to integrate them in the
West and preventing their dependence on the Russian Federation, and to a lesser
extent China and Iran. Western-funded NGOs were involved in manufacturing
grassroots movements in the Ukraine so that the country dependent on Russia for
energy and trade would become a Western satellite that would provide NATO with
the stranglehold it wants on Russia’s border as part of a containment policy.
Although the Western-funded NGOs actual goal is to secure Western corporate
infiltration of the Ukraine, Georgia and other former Soviet republics, the
alleged purpose is humanitarian and human-rights-oriented democracy. The
publicly-stated goal used was and remains a cover to conceal the real goals of
promoting globalization and geopolitical influence.

The Ukrainian upheaval of
2013-2014, culminating in the overthrow of president Yanukovych in February
2014, and the ensuing separatist movement by Russian minorities in the Eastern
provinces has brought the role of the NGOs to the attention of some of the more
discriminating analysts. The two-year old rebel movement in Syria against Assad
also involved Western NGO’s working to fund and guide rebels on the ground,
along with other players, including Saudi and Gulf States elements. The goal
here was and remains regime change, even if it meant indirectly assisting
jihadists that would eventually turn against the West. Similarly, NGOs are
operating everywhere from Venezuela and Cuba where the US wants to see regime
change to parts of Africa, Middle East, and Asia where the West wants to have a
preeminent political, economic and military influence.

In March 2013, Russia
decided to curtail the operations of NGOs by introducing legislation that would
have them registered as foreign agents. Backing the legislation, Putin stated: “Whether
these organizations want it or not, they become an instrument in the hands of
foreign states that use them to achieve their own political objectives. This
situation is unacceptable. This law is designed to prevent interference in
Russia’s internal political life by foreign countries and create transparent
conditions for the financing of nongovernmental organizations.”

The spirit of the Russian
legislation is not very different from what India has tried to do facing
somewhat similar problems with NGOs. More restrictive than India and Russia,
China had several hundred thousand NGOs operating under different
registrations. Like Russia and India, China has argued that the US and other
governments use NGOs to infiltrate institutions, manipulate and mold public
opinion, influence policies and destabilize countries with the sole purpose of
economic, political, cultural and strategic advantage. Not just in the former
Soviet republics, including troubled, Ukraine, but in China and India NGOs have
multiplied by the hundreds of thousands pushing an agenda on everything from
varieties of Christian fundamentalism to commercial products, all under the convenient
cover of freedom and democracy, and humanitarian assistance.

It is important to note
that when European colonists infiltrated Africa, they sent in the clergy to
convert the natives, then the merchants and finally the military to protect
priests and merchants who enjoyed protection under a formalized colony. NOGs
are the instruments of 21st century neo-imperialist policy with a
soft front and a very hard core of commercial, political and military interests
behind the soft face of human rights. An example of the NGOs role
in neo-imperialism is a case of Russian national Alexei Pankin who ran a
USAID-funded media-influence program with $10.5 million coming from billionaire
George Soros.

In a published interview, Pankin admitted that his NGOs included
US intelligence officers. Russian police have cracked down on numerous
non-governmental organizations receiving foreign government funding, an act
that means they are in fact foreign agents by definition even in the US. One
way that the US has used to circumvent the direct ties with NGOs is to
establish funding through foundations including the National Endowment for
Democracy, Ford, Rockefeller, Soros, etc. The money trail may start with the
foundations, but behind them are the government and the largest multination
corporations interested in the integration of former Soviet republics into the
Western sphere of influence in every sense from cultural and political to
economic and strategic.

The role of U.S.-funded
NGOs in trying to impose regime change in a number of Latin American, African,
Asian and Eurasian countries has been controversial because people have one impression
of NGOs when in fact that impression has nothing to do with the reality.
Although NGOs operate on a large scale in the former Soviet republics, their
role is hardly known because the Western media does not conduct investigative
reporting to expose their sources of funding, their tactics and goals. On the
contrary, the media focuses on what appears to be grassroots movements for
progressive change, without mentioning that behind the movements are NGO’s and
that the movements often contain extreme reactionary elements. This is exactly
what took place in Ukraine where neo-Nazis were part of the pro-West movement.

Besides US and EU
governments, the IMF and World Bank as well as large corporations funding
private foundations are behind the NGOs in the former Soviet republics with the
ultimate goal of thoroughly integrating them into the Western orbit of
influence – militarily, politically, and economically. The International Center
for Policy Studies in Ukraine, an organization devoted to integrate Ukraine into
the West, takes pride that the country had more than 40,000 NGOs involving citizens
that took place in the Orange Revolution. Needless to say, when a revolution is
top down, paid for and manufactured, it hardly represents the grassroots and it
hardly has a chance at success, as we have seen in the last two years in civil-war
torn Ukraine. This raises the question of how the West uses NGOs to stage
revolutions for counterrevolutionary purposes, while all along projecting the
impression to the public that the goal is human rights, freedom and democracy.

NGOs can play a vital role
in monitoring the abuses of governments and violations of civil rights and
human rights. They can also play a significant role assisting in emergency
situations with epidemics, famine, refugees, and environmental disasters, economic,
social and scientific development, and other such causes that promote the
welfare of people and the planet. No doubt, the people involved in NGOs come from the professional middle class and represent a value system and perspectives of the bourgeois society, while the people on the receiving end are invariably working class and peasants. As long as the needs of people are met, the civil society concept is fine. However, when the purpose is to coopt the masses into a political system and consumerist culture, when the purpose is to prevent progressive forces from achieving social justice instead of helping them, then civil society is nothing but an instrument of imperialism.

The president of Liberia recently warned that although NGOs had financial and moral integrity problems, they were challenging the state's sovereignty on the same grounds. That so many NGOs have become everything from
soft pressure or lobbying groups for governments and business, that others are in
the business of spying that modern technology has made easier, or that they
have sinister goals of undermining the public good in order to serve narrow
interests is a distortion of the historical purpose of NGOs.

Monday, 15 September 2014

The decline of the European
Socialist parties – France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Greece – represents
the triumph of neoliberalism that the conservative European parties imposed on
Europe in the last three decades. Not just the German elections of autumn 2013,
but the complete embracing of neoliberalism by Francois Hollande and acceptance
of austerity and monetarist policies has entailed that Socialism has no
relationship to it ideological and historical roots. Not that the French
Socialist Party has enjoyed much credibility in the last two decades,
especially considering the corruption and scandals of its leadership, but only
because the conservatives under Sarkozy were also corrupt and scandal-ridden,
and were leading the country deeper toward recession did the voters turn to
Hollande. However, the future for the French Socialists looks no brighter than
it does for Socialists in the rest of Europe. Hollande’s decision
to dismiss the cabinet in August 2014 after the economy minister criticized the
German fiscal and monetary model imposed on all of Europe signaled the unmitigated
submission of French Socialists to neoliberalism. The decision of the French
Socialist government further signaled to the EU that there is no policy difference
between the neoliberal direction and goals of conservative Germany and
Socialist France that was once believed to be free of German influence.
Announcing a new round of tax reductions to the businesses and cuts in the
budget targeting social programs, Hollande, who has a mere 17% public approval,
caved under the pressure of banks, financial firms and large corporations that
support the German austerity model. This officially marked the end of Socialism
in France as anything but a name used for public relations purposes to secure
votes from those identifying with the party that once stood for
class-consciousness based economic, political and social policies and its roots
are in the Marxist tradition.

The popular base of the
Socialist parties of Europe has shifted from the working class before WWI, to
the lower middle class and upper working class (highly paid trade unionists) in
the last half century. While the Socialists always worked within the
parliamentary system and were never revolutionary, they at least insisted on
political reforms that would provide greater economic, social and political
benefits for the lower strata of society.

The Socialist reformist
program (rationalizing capitalism under the state’s tutelage) had become part
of the Keynesian model from the 1930s until the 1980s when Socialist parties
began to abandon their reformist social welfare positions and increasingly
moving toward the neoliberal model and globalization. In the last two decades,
and especially in the last six years amid the global recessionary climate,
European Socialist parties proved repeatedly that they are solidly behind
finance capital without any sense of accountability to their middle class and
upper working class constituency whose interests have been irreparably damaged
by the massive transfer of resources from the social welfare state to the
corporate welfare state and the decline of living standards amid double-digit
unemployment.

Considering that European
Socialist parties represent finance capital, considering their recent history
of betraying voters with false promises, lying to them to win elections in
France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and even Germany, the question is whether
European Socialism has a future and whether it should claim the name “Socialism”?
It is true that European intellectuals and trade union leaders were always
behind the European Socialist movements and political parties, and that this
has been a top-down political organization and not grassroots. However, it is
also true that those intellectuals were driven by idealism and not raw desire
for power and wealth as the current leadership across Europe. Not only did the
Socialist lose their way once they embraced nationalism and capitalism above
loyalty to the working class across national borders, but they continued to
deteriorate after the Bolshevik Revolution when they moved father to the right
and became anti-revolutionary, in essence an integral part of the institutional
structure of capitalism.

The cooptation of Socialist
parties into the mainstream of capitalist institutions necessarily entailed
embracing finance capitalism with some state controls to coopt the lower
classes. The only question remained to what degree were Socialists any
different than liberals or conservatives? Until the 1980s, Socialists claimed
that they were the defenders of the middle class and workers because they
believed in institutional protections for workers and maintained some
commitment to social justice through human rights and civil issues. However, by
the late 1980s to early 1990s, it was evident that Socialist parties across
Europe were interested in “Clintonizing” their parties so that they would
appear Socialist to their constituents, but in reality pursue fiscal, monetary,
trade, investment and labor policies no different than their conservative
counterparts.

The image of Socialism
remained in the forefront, but the essence was gone. It took the austerity
orientation that Germany has been dictating to the rest of EU since 2010 for
many people to see through the farce of Socialist myths. If Sarkozy and
Hollande are both equally committed to austerity and neoliberalism, then why
should the voter choose Socialism that merely lies to the voters to secure
power and serve finance capital? This meant that for those seeking an
alternative neoliberalism, there is always the neo-Fascist alternative of
Marine Le Pen in France, for example, or the Communist Party that has its own
historic problems and lacks credibility more than the neo-Fascists. The same
holds true across Europe, where voters are becoming increasingly polarized as
the European Parliament elections demonstrated in 2014.

When Europeans watched the
Greek Socialist Party PASOK take the lead to place the country under IMF-EU
austerity in 2010, many argued at the time that Greece was the exception. PASOK
had won with 45 percent of the vote, while it currently has 4 percent in
opinion polls. Portugal, Ireland, and Cyprus followed the same path; and
informally, so did Spain, Italy and France. The pattern proved that IMF-German
imposed austerity policies acceptable to Socialist parties of Europe was the
norm, demonstrating that Socialism was hollow and represented financial
capitalism rather than workers and the middle class. Just as prepared as the conservatives
to do away with workers' protection ranging from social programs to maintaining
wage rates, the Socialists argued and continue to do so that "there is no
alternative", presumably to neoliberalism as though everything starts and
ends with neoliebral policies.

The only choice of voters
was where to cast their vote because the two-party system of Europe began to
resemble the two-party system of the US where the differences between
Republicans and Democrats are on the cultural issues and stylistics about the
environment and similar issues rather than what core class interests each party
represents. Has Europe become like the US where the voters know there are only
stylistic differences on essential social, economic, and foreign policy issues?
Has European Socialism lost its way from its Marxist origins to become even
more apologetic of capitalism than conservative parties?In 1912, Socialism
experienced its zenith, declining very rapidly thereafter as it embraced the
nationalist over the internationalist position on foreign policy on the eve of
the Great War. The triumph of Wilsonian liberalism during the 1910s and
the political realities of postwar reconstruction amid political polarization
with Fascism and Nazism on the rise in the 1920s presented opportunities for
Socialism to emerge in a leadership role across Europe. However, with the
exception of France and Spain under the Popular Front in the 1930s, Socialism
suffered setbacks across Europe, largely because of lack of cooperation with
the Communists and other progressive parties, but also because it was
increasingly a status quo party. The New Deal in the US, and the adoption of
the Keynesian social welfare model that provided an institutional safety net
for the lower classes essentially meant the Socialists were satisfied working
with the system to promote capitalism that made modest concessions to the lower
classes and allowed for the possibility of upward social mobility.

Using the argument that
Socialist parties are committed to social justice, defending trade unions,
defending the poor, defending minorities, defending collective bargaining, and
guarding against the abuses of capitalism, Socialist parties were able to keep
their popular base, while securing the support of capitalists who understood
the significance of social harmony under a social contract where labor and the
lower middle class enjoyed some benefits and believed the system served them as
well as the capitalists. However, the triumph of the US over the Communist
bloc emboldened the neoliberals interested in crushing even the remnants of
Keynesian policies that were left over from the 1908s when Reagan and Thatcher
had begun to dismantle the social welfare state in order to strengthen defense
and the corporate welfare state.

In the absence of
Communism, the conservatives turned their attention on Socialists whose
policies were hardly any different than those of neoliberals. With the advent
of environmental political parties, essentially bourgeois in every sense given
that their commitment to social justice was as diluted as that of the
Socialists, the attack on European Socialists came from different directions,
including the far right. To preserve the institutional gains Socialist parties
had made throughout Europe, they turned to the right, embracing globalization
and neoliberalism, further alienating their voters who remained loyal to
Socialism as it once was rather than it had evolved. Merkel’s monumental
political success and Germany’s unquestioned economic hegemony convinced
European Socialist leaders that their only option was to pay homage to
neoliberalism and its austerity policies that finance capital advocated.

After all, what choices did
voters have but to remain loyal to Socialism no matter how far to the right it
had evolved, considering that across Europe the conservatives appeared strong.
The voters of course have signaled that they are willing to go to the far
right, abandoning the two-party system representing neoliberal thinking. Not
just Greece where neo-Nazi Golden Dawn ranks number three in public opinion
polls, but in all of Europe from Austria to Italy the far right is making a
strong return because the Socialist parties are even more bourgeois and
neoliberal than the conservative, and most voter seeking an alternative have no
faith in Communism, given its 20th century history. The political
polarization of the European political arena is the result of the Socialist
parties falling victims to cooptation by the capitalist system. If we examine
individual Socialist leaders in Europe, we find that they are no less corrupt,
no less clientist in their mode of operation, no less power hungry and
unconcerned with the lower classes than conservatives.

One option for the future
of European Socialist parties is to abandon neoliberalism and return to their
ideological roots and unyielding commitment to social justice. Slowly, they may
be able to rebuild their parties from the grassroots level, rather than
accepting massive campaign contributions from capitalists and trying to pass
out clientist political favors as a way to build a popular voting base. The
other option, and much more honorable, is for Socialists to disband and declare
themselves openly neoliberal advocates. Trying to fool people that they are
“Socialists” has its limits and the very low popularity of Hollande as well as
of all Socialist parties clearly indicates as much.

There are leftist parties, including Greece’s
SYRIZA that currently leads in opinion polls, as well as the Scottish Socialist
Party, and others resisting conformity to neoliberalism and defending social justice that have no political baggage as the
established European Socialist parties do. Perhaps these parties represent the
new hope for those progressive voters looking for a party that pursues social
justice policies and does not simply use the title “Socialist” to attract
votes. It remains to be seen what the future holds for Socialist parties, but
at this juncture things look as bad for them as they do for the Communist
parties.

"A
gripping, passion-filled, and suspenseful tale of love, betrayal,
political and religious intrigue, this novel entices the reader’s
senses and intellect beyond conventions. Slaves to Gods and Demons
takes the reader through a roller coaster enthralling journey of
personal trials and triumphs of a family emerging vanquished and
destitute after World War II.

Narrated by a young boy, Morfeos, modeled after the Greco-Roman pagan
deity of sleep and dreams, the book reveals the soul of a people trying
to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
the central theme that life is invariably a series of illusions, some
of which are euphoric, most horrifying, all an integral part of daily
existence.

Striving for purpose amid life’s absurdities after the destruction of
western civilization in two global wars, the characters in Slaves to
Gods and Demons struggle between holding on to the glory and grandeur of
a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
secular events in Western Civilization."